


Conductor of Light

by PlaidAdder



Series: Missing Pages [25]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Established Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Inspired by Music, M/M, Music, POV John Watson, fidelio, opera - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-25
Updated: 2018-08-25
Packaged: 2019-07-01 23:25:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15784281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlaidAdder/pseuds/PlaidAdder
Summary: This is my first time writing in response to a prompt. From OldShrewsburyian: Holmes and Watson go to the opera. At least, they attend a rehearsal for a new production of Fidelio. It brings up some Things for both of them.For those new to the series, your experience will be enhanced if your read "Five Dirty Minutes in the Dark" first. "O Paradis," the second story in the series, is also opera-related and important to this story.





	Conductor of Light

**Author's Note:**

  * For [OldShrewsburyian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldShrewsburyian/gifts).



**August 13, 1891**

It is a week now since my return to Baker Street. The practice is sold--for more than I dreamed of; they will confess nothing, but I detect the invisible hand of a Holmes at work here--and the house I once shared with Mary is let to another young couple. They asked to retain some of the furniture and decorations. The rest of it has been packed off to Walsall or sold. I found that in the end, apart from Mary's friendship, there was little about our married life that I cared to retain. I have one box, containing some sentimental odds and ends. Otherwise, I cannot say I brought a great deal more to our household than I did the day we first signed the lease, not twenty-four hours after our first meeting.

Everything here is familiar, and everything is different. I enter the sitting room and, from force of habit, assume my old arm-chair and pile around me the daily papers. Mrs. Hudson sends up breakfast, grumbles darkly about Holmes's non-appearance, and returns to her sitting room. An hour later, Holmes emerges, swoops hungrily down upon the remains of the meal, consumes them all in a moment as if he were burst of flame, and then is drawn as if by magnetism to his chemistry apparatus. We might not speak to each other for an hour.

Or, after five minutes of listening to him clink pipettes against glass tubes and murmur to himself over the results, I might lay aside my paper, approach the hearth, and (as the fall is coming on and the mornings becoming chill) hold my hands out to the blaze. Hearing my movements, he might look up from the scrap of blotting-paper on which he is jotting down a chemical equation, and fasten his eyes upon me. I might hear his footfalls approaching stealthily from behind. I might pretend to take no notice; or I might turn, at what I judge to be the apposite moment, and  take _him_ by surprise. And at the end of that same hour, I might be reclining on my side upon the bear-skin hearth-rug, watching the mingled firelight and sunlight shine upon his flushed cheeks and moistened eyes, one arm draped round his waist, his other hand clasped in mine, both of us enfolded by the bright and protective wings of an unexpectedly tender providence. 

It is an exciting and uncertain time. I still know him as I always knew him; but so much more comes to light every day. He arches his back and stretches his arms and I imagine him splitting his skin, emerging through it, extending in new directions. I observe, I make an inference, I am certain I'm right or certain I'm wrong, sometimes at the same time. A particularly thrilling danger is the mystery of his time apart from me. He says and believes that he has told me all, and does not understand that he has not. It cannot all be told. 

The stakes are high and I am often wrong; and yet, that abyss still beckons me, and I return with my single torch to guess at its dimensions and contours. It was with some apprehension, then, that one evening, as we sat facing each other over the stripped carcass of a roasted woodcock, and Holmes slouched toward his after-dinner attitude of semi-somnolent repletion, I mentioned an item I had seen in that morning's paper.

"Herr Richter has returned to London," I said. "There was an interview with him in the  _Morning Post._ He has been invited by Drury Lane, to take charge of a new production."

Holmes's eyes snapped open. His posture corrected itself. He laid his hands on the tablecloth, and sat before like an ancient Sphinx, watchful and restless, quivering and motionless.

"They are having another bash at  _Fidelio,_ " I said. "There will be new scenes and--"

Holmes's petrification ended abruptly, as he snapped his fingers and waved the puffery away. "Who's singing?"

I named them somewhat reluctantly. His little movements of impatience, the subtle curl of his lip or twitch of his eyebrow as he considered and dismissed this or that artist's talents, were as endearing to me as any of his moments of tenderness. Finally I named the baritone cast as Don Pizarro, and his eyes lit with eager anticipation.

"He will carry it," Holmes said, with all the excitement of a racetrack tout giving his opinion on handicaps. "One would wish for a more experienced Leonore, and if one cannot cast a German or an Italian tenor as Florestan, one would prefer even an Irish one to the cold English fish they've actually landed. But with a rousing Pizarro, and a strong chorus..."

He blinked. The shadows fell. He shrank back in his chair, legs drawn up, arms curled round his shins, chin on his knees. It was as if he had suddenly been transported to the Arctic, and was instinctively conserving his warmth.

"I have taken two box seats for the premiere," I said. 

"Oh, Watson," he said, fretfully. "You might have asked me before you spent the money."

"You don't wish to go?" I said.

He shook his head violently. "I  _do_ wish--but--it would--"

"You are afraid."

He tucked in his chin, hid his face, and laid his forehead against his knees. "I am," he said, in a muffled voice.

"And that is why," I replied, with a very careful assumption of indifference and nonchalance, "I called at Drury Lane today and spoke with Herr Richter. He has agreed to allow us to attend a rehearsal beforehand."

Holmes lifted his head and stared at me.

"It will not be in full dress," I said, "and the chorus will not be called; but all the principals will be in attendance and there will be a full orchestra. I thought--if we heard it for the first time just the two of us, without any other spectators--the cast will be absorbed in what they're doing--it's a large hall--"

He would not respond; he had his lips pressed tightly together, to keep something terrifying within; but he nodded, emphatically, to confirm my deduction. He did not fear the intense sensations and emotions that the music would evoke--rather, he craved them more than ever--but he had a terror of becoming a public spectacle. He was still accepting, with some trepidation, his own increasing susceptibility to the softer emotions.

I was certain, a few moments later, that my plan would be a brilliant success. I remained convinced of it, as day followed night, until we were actually in the hall. Herr Richter had greeted us warmly and, when I ventured to mention that we had attended his unforgettable  _Tristan_ years ago, received the compliment very gracefully before beginning a complex, dispassionate anatomization of every flaw in that production and every mistake he personally had made. Holmes listened with unfeigned attention, agreeing with him far more often than I thought politeness would dictate. But this only made Herr Richter's Teutonic countenance beam the more brightly. With his somewhat awkwardly-worded blessing, we ensconced ourselves at the back of the cavernous hall, on the orchestra level. 

The singers, it became apparent, were behind their time. Herr Richter, erect upon his stand in the orchestra pit, had his back turned toward us; but I saw him fuming silently. Then he began fuming aloud, though only to himself and in German. Finally, at a suggestion from the concert master, he decided to make the best of it and put the orchestra through its paces. They struck up the overture.

Holmes leaned back in his chair. His eyelids drooped. His lips curved in a thin smile, then parted slightly as his fingertips danced--along with the violins--about his trouser knees. I had observed him in this mood so often, in so many concert halls or opera stalls. It was always a source of wonder for me, how mere sound--pleasant enough, I grant--had the power to loosen his taut limbs and soften his keen features. But now, for the first time, I felt a forbidden thrill of recognition. His eyelids closed thus, his white throat bared itself thus, his fingertips fluttered thus, under the caress of love. I felt a momentary and unreasonable jealousy. It is not as if I had not understood, in some inarticulate way, that music was both his first love and his first lover.

I looked on, as the violins chased each other up and down the scales, and imagined the sitting room carpet, enchanted like one in the Arabian Nights, flying across the city toward us. I would lift Holmes in my arms, lay him softly down upon it, and ride with him across the skies and round the world. From every city we sailed above, music would rise, stroking our magic carpet with its warm breath, rippling its edges, wafting us onward. Entwined together, shielded by the carpet from the upturned eyes of the curious, we would ravish each other as the music caressed our bare limbs and twined itself in our tangled hair. 

When the orchestra was cut off in the middle of a phrase, I almost felt as if I were falling from the sky, and almost expected to break my back against the floor.

Holmes, also, was startled out of his reverie. The tenor had arrived, and was standing at the edge of the stage exchanging muttered words with Herr Richter. An urgent, but not uncivil conversation ended suddenly when a young woman, in a dress whose richness and decolletage would have been far better suited to an evening recital, swept onto the stage, her delicate hands plucking nervously at her blonde French curls. 

"Good afternoon, Fraulein Tennyson," said Herr Richter, with cold politeness. "I rejoice that you have overcome your indisposition."

The young woman clenched her hands slightly and tossed her head. "I don't see what's so amusing to you. Eleven o'clock is a perfectly beastly hour for a Sunday rehearsal."

"On the contrary, Fraulein," said Herr Richter, "I assure you I am not amused. My concern for your delicate health is entirely genuine. I beg that you will seat yourself in the orchestra and rest; we will begin when you have recovered. Herr Lloyd, please, while our Leonore gathers strength, let us try again the Welch Dunkel hier, hein?"

The tenor exhaled a noisy sigh. "Must we start with that? Could I not warm up with--"

"You will start with it on the night, Herr Lloyd. With little notice, if memory serves. I hoped your stage manager had been--ich besuche die richtige Worter--made away with? No. Dismissed. Not you, Fraulein, you are not dismissed, you have barely arrived. Herr Lloyd, your mark please. Now."

The orchestra scrambled into action. The tenor was slow journeying to his position center stage, and was almost left behind. "O Gott!" he half-shouted, stumbling into his opening. "Welch Dunkel hier!"

Amusing myself with their antics, I did not see Holmes's expression when the those first notes--arresting enough, for all his unreadiness--rent the air. I only felt his hand clutch my knee. His fingers dug into my flesh so sharply that I nearly cried out. His hand began to tremble as the tenor's voice strained upward. I thought it best not to look at him, and possibly draw attention. I knew there was no chance of persuading him to release his hold on me. He was in the grip of something that he could not endure alone. I covered my hand with his, in what I hoped was a discreet way.

It was not until the aria had ended, and the tenor was absorbed in conversation with Herr Richter, that I risked a glance at Holmes. Along his hairline I could see beads of perspiration. He let out a slow breath, like a runner at the end of his race. He gave my knee a final pat, as if to apologize to it, and turned his large and tear-brightened eyes on me.

"Well," he said, with an attempt at a carefree smile. "I must congratulate Herr Richter. He has extracted something genuine from that old ham, after all."

Mr. Lloyd looked to me no more than thirty-five; but it is true that his self-consciousness and affectation of manner seemed to age him. Holmes settled back in his chair to watch Herr Richter at last bring the young woman up to the stage. The tenor returned to his mark. He sent the young woman as far stage left as she could get. 

"O namenlose Freude," Holmes murmured.

He was right, of course; Richter's idea, naturally, was for her to approach her Florestan during the course of the song, so that they might thrill the audience by clinging together at last during the final climax. The tremolo in the strings began, and the wife moved slowly toward her long-lost husband, as they sang to each other of the nameless joy of their reunion. 

Holmes bent sharply forward, almost grimacing in irritation. Even I--and I will admit that my receptive apparatus, when it comes to music, is hardly sensitive--found myself almost itching. It was not that the notes were wrong. Both singers seemed to me quite technically accomplished. It was merely...disappointing. It was somehow nothing more than the vertical movement of pitches overlaid on the lateral movement of bodies. There were all the parts, yet it failed to become anything. 

Richter cut them off. He spoke to them, crisply but without rancor, and not loud enough for us to hear. He began again.

He stopped them again.

By the fourth repetition of this sequence, Holmes had become quite restless. He fidgeted in his seat as Richter called the soprano to the edge of the stage once more. His voice remained low, though increasingly strained; but hers did not.

"Of course I know what I'm saying!" Evidently her speaking voice was quite as carrying as her singing voice, at least when she was very cross. She stamped one of her slippers upon the stage. "I've read it up, down, and side to side in German AND in English and it doesn't help at all. 'Oh joy oh rapture past expressing!' If it's _past expressing_ , why am I singing about it?"

"Oh I say," said the tenor. "That's not playing the game. This is not Ibsen, darling, it's opera. Don't ask questions about the rubbish in the libretto." He turned to her with a condescending smile. "The music will give you whatever you need. Don't even think about the words. I never do."

Herr Richter was so taken aback that he could not find any words at all for several seconds. When he found them, they were in German. The soprano--and eventually, the tenor--began shouting back in English. 

I glanced toward the seat next to me. Holmes was not in it. I was alarmed to see that he was on the move, striding down the aisle toward the orchestra pit.

"...ridiculous mock dungeon," the soprano continued, as I followed him. The men had temporarily lapsed into exhausted silence, but she was finding her stride. "If she loves him that much why is she standing fifty feet away from him? Why is she _singing_ at him, and  _how_ is he singing at her? If he's really starving--"

Holmes, who had been vainly attempting to get anyone's attention during this speech, suddenly brought his walking stick down on the edge of the barrier behind which Herr Richter was standing. Everyone stopped talking and looked at him.

"Excuse me, Miss Tennyson," he said, in his brightest and most charming client voice. "I could not help but overhear your statement of the problem; and though a mere amateur in the field of musical performance, I am something of an expert on problems. Will you permit me to suggest to you the solution that Herr Richter would undoubtedly set forward, were he currently possessed of the necessary patience and calm?"

Richter looked at him, nodded, and swept an arm toward the stage, inviting him to continue. The soprano said, "Who in the world are you?"

"I am Mr. Sherlock Holmes," he said, quietly.

The mention of his name changed everything. Silently, I noted all the changes in stance and expression that showed me that the tenor, the soprano, the maestro--even the musicians in the orchestra pit--had ceded him deference, authority, and control.

"This is my friend and colleague Dr. Watson," he added, answering a question none of them had cared to ask. "Dr. Watson, I'm sure, shares your frustrations with the libretto."

He looked at me for confirmation. I had never troubled myself to study the libretto; but this was not the first duet we had improvised. "Absolutely, Holmes," I replied. "A man who had been imprisoned under these conditions as long as Florestan has could count himself lucky if he could stand without support, let alone sing an aria."

"And for Leonore," Holmes continued lightly, turning toward me, resting an arm casually along the barrier. "From the point of view of verisimilitude, Doctor...her sensations and her feelings at this moment, I should imagine, would be extremely complex."

I played along, though not without swallowing a certain pricking in my throat and a bit of a heave in my stomach. "Oh, very complex. The shock of finding him in this state can hardly have passed from her so quickly. After imagining this moment for so many years--to see him chained, starved, thirsty, and undoubtedly filthy and leaping with vermin--"

The soprano gave out a little shriek. Richter stared at me. The tenor repeated, "Oh, I say." Holmes picked up the line.

"Precisely, Watson. Concern, fear, pity, perhaps even disgust, would have their place in her response, would they not? And they would certainly crowd out any feelings of joy."

"No," I said.

He tilted his head. He blinked at me. "No?" he repeated, with just the hint of a smile.

"They would not  _crowd it out_ ," I insisted. "The joy would simply be...mingled. With the rest of it."

"Ah. Very well put, Doctor." He turned away from me, I think partly for fear that he might drop the ball entirely if he looked any longer at my face, and addressed himself to the soprano. "Mingled. And that is how everything in this world is. No happiness unmixed with sadness, no joy unmingled with terror." He leapt lightly over the barrier, dropping onto the conductor's podium, which Richter vacated just in time. "In this world, the first meeting of these two loving human creatures after long separation would be complicated. Sorrow, uneasiness, fear, misunderstanding, even resentment would all have their share--for her, at any rate. As for him, it will be days before he is fit to touch or speak with another human being. Two years of darkness, isolation, infrequent bread and water, and always chained? Prisoners in our own gaols go mad under very similar circumstances. You're quite right to object to the libretto, my dear Miss Tennyson, on the grounds of verisimilitude. You're being asked to enact something that could never happen,  _in this world._ "

The soprano, rather surprised to find the great man taking her side with such avidity, nodded, and said, "Thank you, Mr. Holmes, that is precisely what I was trying to explain." The tenor fumed next to her. Richter stood to one side of the podium, watching my friend with--I thought--admiration.

"But," said Holmes, lifting a dramatic forefinger. "Leonore and Florestan do not live  _in this world._ They live in Beethoven's world, which is immeasurably more beautiful and fine than our own. _That_ world is ruled not by money and power but by passion, love, and beauty. In the world of Beethoven's music, there is rage and sorrow and tragedy but there isn't _meanness_ , there isn't the bleak disappointment of quotidian evils and commonplace crimes. Greed and cruelty may grow strong but they will never corrupt nor overpower the pure in heart. Rocco thinks love cannot live without gold; he is wrong. Pizarro thinks that cruelty will save him from the final reckoning; he is wrong. Florestan, chained in a filthy dungeon and trying to remember what sunlight is, looks up and sees an angel descending through the clouds to rescue him  _and he is right."_

Everyone's attention was now riveted on Holmes. The soprano's eyes were fastened upon him; her hands hung at her sides, her lips parted slightly. The tenor, who had crouched on the stage in an ostentatiously negligent attitude, had pushed himself forward, hands gripping the edge of the stage, shins dangling over it. Richter's back was to me, but I could see him nodding, just perceptibly, at points of emphasis. Holmes threw a glance back toward me. I felt as if my love for him was bursting out of my heart like the rays of the sun. Perhaps it really was; for Holmes smiled, and as he turned back to his task, his face nearly shone.

"He sees an angel because he needs and deserves one," said Holmes. "And that is Beethoven's world. The good are rewarded and the evil punished, and there is no barrier constructed by man or demon that can withstand the assault of love. Florestan says Leonore will be rewarded--how does it go--"

Holmes waved at the tenor. He sang, at half-voice, "Euch werde Lohn in bessern Welte..."

"Yes!" Holmes snapped his fingers. "May you be rewarded _i_ _n a better world_. That is where _Fidelio_ takes us. To a better world. A world where joy can in an _instant_ wipe away two years of misery and grief. A world where love will always fix anything cruelty has broken. A world where lovers are always reunited, just because their love is true. That this world is neither realistic nor real is beside the point. We _need_ the better world to survive the evils of this one. You are the angel, Miss Tennyson, not only for your imaginary Florestan, but for everyone in the hall--the spectators, the singers, even your maestro here. With those gifts of song given to so few, you come to this stage to rescue  _all of us._ _That_ is the truth of this scene, not the contemptible scenery or the conventional expressions of romantic ecstasy. You sing as if you are saving all of us by singing. Do you understand?"

The young woman nodded, with surprising gravity and conviction. "I do."

"And you," said Holmes, gesturing toward the tenor with the baton that Richter had just handed him. "What you put into the last section of  _welch ein Dunkel hier--_ "

"It's the same now, only more so," said the tenor, nodding.

"Yes. So as she approaches, you look at her exactly the way you looked at the angel,  _until_ she is close enough to touch."

The tenor spontaneously got to his feet and returned to his mark. At a glance from Holmes, the soprano began walking stage left. Holmes raised the baton and looked at the musicians. They glanced at Richter. Richter nodded. They raised their instruments.

"If we could attempt this just the once with a less emphatic attack," he said. "If we could try starting  _pianissimo,_ and then if it could float up like the mist rising, and see how that sounds?"

The concert master nodded at him. I leaned over the barrier to murmur to Richter.

"Is this all right?" I said. "I know it wasn't--what you expected when you--"

Richter patted me on the shoulder. "My dear Herr Doktor," he said. "This for me is like a gift from heaven. For days I sweat here trying to make them understand exactly this. They hear it now because he is their own countryman. It could not be otherwise. It annoys; but such is life in  _this_ world, nein? _"_

And the great master actually winked at me.

"He can read a score, it is clear," Richter continued. "I only hope he can keep time. It is not as easy, here, as it is with the imaginary orchestra in one's bedroom."

Holmes brought the baton down. The violins emerged, slowly, like a rising mist.

I gestured toward the stage. "May I...?" I wanted to see his face.

Richter nodded to me. "Of course. Stay well back and they will not even notice you."

I made my way into the wings, slowly and cautiously. By the time I came out, well upstage of the singers, the soprano was hovering just a few feet away from the tenor, reaching toward him as if drawn by an irresistible force, and yet held in place by the waning strength of her human doubts and fears. As I stepped cautiously downstage, the invisible bands snapped, and she rushed in and threw herself to her knees by the tenor's side, embracing him as tightly as breath support and projection would allow.

"Du wieder nun in meinem Armen!" she sang; and I felt it pierce me. How my empty arms had longed for him, all that miserable time. 

"O Gott, wie Gross ist dein Erbarmen!" the tenor sang back, winding his arms around her and forgetting that he was meant to be chained. Nobody took any notice. I looked past their kneeling forms to the edge of the pit, where Holmes was wielding the baton far more authoritatively and skilfully than he had ever handled a gun. His eyes, raised toward the singers, slipped past them and found me. The astonishment never showed in his movements, but it transfigured his face. I cannot quite imagine myself as an angel. But at the moments where he needs one, I suppose that is what I become. 

"O dank dir Gott fur diese Lust!" 

Their voices fused together, like streams of molten gold and silver, glittering ever brighter as they trickled up and down the scale. The orchestra, shimmering round them like the spray of a fountain, thundered rapidly back into the depths and died away. Holmes's baton fell. His head lifted--triumphant, exalted, unafraid. He was in a better world. With a glance in my direction, he set my whole inner self trembling. I hardened my muscles and set my jaw, so as not to betray it to the others. But he saw, and he knew. We would leave this rehearsal as fast as we could. And when we returned for the performance in three days' time, we would both be perfectly capable of listening to this opera in evening dress, with the eyes of the city's beaux and belles and dowagers upon us, without shuddering to the core, and without falling apart. 

Richter accepted the baton. Holmes made his way over the barrier. I headed into the wings. He found me there. He seized me, in the half-darkness, and we staggered toward the brick wall at the back of the theater. What, in this world, is dangerous and dirty, is altogether otherwise in the better world. And in a theater, sometimes, with enough skill and no small amount of luck...one can live, for a moment, in both.

 JHW

 

**Author's Note:**

> I must thank the late lamented Leonard Bernstein for my lifelong Beethoven enthusiasm. There was a PBS series in which he taught and then conducted each of the symphonies, and that was my entry point. The Leonore overture (written for the opera but no longer used as its overture) was one of my favorite things to listen to, and _Fidelio_ is one of my favorite operas, and its basic scenario--one lover going through hell and into the dungeons to rescue the other--has reappeared in my fiction many times and under many guises. And, of course, there is the bonus of cross-dressing and two romances in which one appears m/f but is actually f/f and one is actually m/f but appears m/m (something more apparent in performance than while listening). I'm glad OldShrewsburyian gave me a reason to finally write this!


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